Your Right to Know

Eager to step up the fight against a growing opiate epidemic, the Ohio House passed legislation
last week to increase funding for drug treatment and other measures aimed at fighting
addictions.

“We’ve learned so much about how legal prescriptions can cause so much death and havoc in Ohio’s
families,” said Rep. Lynn Wachtmann, R-Napoleon.

“Every community is touched by these addiction problems from prescription drugs, which many
times lead to heroin abuse and death.”

Underscoring members’ sense of urgency, the House incorporated four bills dealing with the issue
into an off-year budget bill it passed last week. In a rare move, all four also were passed
separately and sent to the Senate.

Those proposals would:

• Fund addiction-treatment services across the state.

• Require written consent from a minor’s parent or guardian before opiates are prescribed.

In Ohio, five people per day die from accidental drug overdoses. Despite a crackdown on
prescription opiates in recent years, they cause more overdoses than heroin and cocaine do
combined.

The push to address the problem follows hearings held across the state last summer and fall by a
House committee led by Rep. Robert Sprague, R-Findlay. Legislators said they were moved by stories
about addiction that began with a prescription for painkillers, perhaps after a teen had wisdom
teeth removed.

“We’re facing an epidemic — an epidemic that has entangled itself into every nook and cranny of
our state,” Sprague said. “There are thousands of Ohioans becoming addicted to opiates, eventually
causing their lives to spiral out of control.”

Wachtmann said his image of a drug addict has changed.

“We used to maybe stereotype the drug addict as an inner-city person on the street. This
prescription problem is everywhere,” he said. “What really shocks your brain is that 80 percent of
these prescriptions come from doctors that are then either misused or stolen.”

Still, some of the proposals have raised concerns. Addiction treatment would be funded by
reallocating most of the nearly $50 million recently provided to county boards of mental-health and
addiction services.

Advocates for the mentally ill say the plan takes much-needed funds from one

population in desperate need of help and gives it to another in crisis.

“Don’t take from mental health to give to addiction services. There’s got to be a better place
to come up with the money,” said Terry Russell, director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness
in Ohio.

“What this means is that people with mental illness will die. They don’t have any other voices
advocating for them.”

Sprague has argued that Ohio’s recent expansion of Medicaid — which will provide health coverage
to more uninsured people — will free up funding for mental-health services and mitigate any loss.
In addition, his proposal would loosen spending earmarks if Medicaid enrollment doesn’t hit
projections.

Sprague said he wants to use the money saved by the Medicaid expansion to close the gaps in
addiction services, particularly in poor rural areas where few treatment options are available.
Under the plan, $25 million would be earmarked for housing for those addicted to painkillers and
other drugs.